


Breath

by TreasureHunter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, POV Second Person, Slight Revenge of the Sith novelization AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24812332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TreasureHunter/pseuds/TreasureHunter
Summary: You jump.You fall.You breathe.Anakin's transformation into Darth Vader.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Darth Vader, Darth Sidious & Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Kudos: 18





	Breath

**Author's Note:**

> You know that popular theory that it was Darth Sidious who sucked out Padmé's lifeforce to sustain Anakin during his transformation into Darth Vader? Well, what if it wasn't Palpatine who did that, but Anakin himself?
> 
> AKA, I couldn't leave sad stuff well enough alone and had to make it even sadder.
> 
> I wrote this in second person POV, in honour of that bit in the ROTS novelization that just hits like a blasterwound to the chest.

You jump.

You fall.

You land in the coarse ash - so much worse than the sand ever was, dry and acrid and dead - and it is only when you try to jump back into the fight that you discover your legs are gone. Your arm, too, lies a few feet away, and from the corner of your eye you see it roll down the slope until it disappears into the lava. It burns.

You look up at Obi-Wan, your mentor, your friend, your brother. Your enemy. His betrayal stings in your eyes, but they remain dry in the incendiary heat of Mustafar.

He talks to you about destiny and darkness and love and you want to laugh. All of this, everything, you did for love. You were horrified at yourself even while you did it, but you persevered. For her. For your unborn child. For your future. And she betrayed you too.

You scream, _I hate you!_ , and he flinches and if you could you would flinch too. Obi-Wan stares at you, face distorted in hurt and grief, and you know you mirror his expression. You want to say something, anything, but in your struggle the treacherous ash shifts and you inch closer to the river of flame. Too close, and the pitiful remains of your legs catch fire.

You don’t even notice, in the beginning, too focused on Obi-Wan, but the fire spreads quickly and it hurts. It hurts so much and it overpowers all your other senses, until pain is all there is and even the Force turns distant, closed off, inaccessible. There is no escape and you lose all track of time as you wait for death to claim you. You cannot possibly survive this.

Yet you do. You burn and you burn until there is nothing left but a charred metal arm and a shriveled corpse that somehow still draws breath. Eventually the flames die out and you lie there. You cannot move but you have to, so you reach out with your sole remaining limb - and isn’t that a joke? - and pull yourself up. It hurts, of course it does, but it is nothing after the flames.

That doesn’t mean you have the strength left to go far. You reach with the energy of desperation, but eventually even that source runs dry and you simply feel nothing. Shortly you consider using your anger, as is the way of the Sith and you _are_ a Sith now, but it never was enough to sustain you. It gave you an edge, yes, but it had been fear that motivated you all along. There is nothing left to fear now.

Slowly, tentatively, you reach out with the Force. You don’t know what you expect, or what you hope to find, but you are surprised when you feel nothing at all on this dead planet. Even Obi-Wan has left you to die.

Obi-Wan. Once your brother and your brother-in-arms, the man you trusted above all others save your wife. He professed to love you, you remember vaguely even though it cannot have been that long ago, yet he watched you burn and walked away. If he truly loved you, he would have put you out of your misery. Yet another betrayal.

A dark feeling swirls in your scorched stomach, all-empowering and all-compassing, and it takes you a moment to identify it as hate. You take solace in it, and wait for the planet to finish you.

But you cheat death yet again. Your new master comes for you, and you cannot decide whether that heals or hurts. It doesn’t matter much anyway. You have irrevocably chosen your path.

You don’t remember much from the shuttle ride back to Coruscant, finally losing your tenacious grasp on consciousness.

You dream.

You dream the same dream that has haunted you for weeks, and you do not understand. Her face scrunches up in pain and you are not there to help her, to hold her. Even in your dream you hurl in impotence, and on instinct alone you reach out to her, through the empty endlessness of the galaxy, until you find her. Latch onto her. She lives, still.

You calm a bit. As long as she lives, it hasn’t been for nothing. As long as she lives, you have a reason to live too. You love her. After everything, that hasn’t changed. That will never change.

You hold onto that connection as you are brought into a surgical theater and true torment begins. Medical droids cut in your skin and nerves and lungs and replace them with mechanical counterparts. It doesn’t hurt like the fire, but it comes close. You squeeze your eyes shut and grasp onto her presence like a lifeline.

The droids work silently as they rebuild your destroyed body into an indestructible silhouette that is equal parts armor and life support, and you let them. Your body is no longer your concern; it will survive, in which case it will survive everything that the future may throw at it, or it won’t. You don’t want to die though - Obi-Wan is still out there, and the hate that developed in your stomach has spread through the short extremities that you have left and fills you entirely. He did this to you and you refuse to die until he has suffered the same.

You clutch at her presence as your abused body once more screams in agony. You feed off her warmth and familiarity like a leech, but you cannot bring yourself to stop and risk losing her. You’re afraid you won’t find her again. As long as you can feel her, she’s safe.

Safe from your visions and safe from you. You can barely even think, in that timeless space where you are reconstructed, of that moment when you took her throat and pressed down on her trachea. You wouldn’t ever harm her, yet you did. You cannot trust yourself around her anymore, so this connection is as close to her as you’ll ever get again. You’ll make sure of it.

You want to cry but they are almost done with your new body and you find no tears to shed. Whether that is because of the fire or the droids, you cannot say.

From above a black shape descends. It comes closer with an inevitability you cannot stop, meant to lock you in forever. The final piece of your coffin, with you still alive in it. Barely. Hanging by a thread. The cool metal embraces your face and for a moment, just a moment, you are not on Coruscant at all. Instead you are in another medcenter and you kiss your wife, take her breath in your mouth.

You breathe.

It is your first and your final breath and it disturbs the perfect silence around you. You want it to stop but you cannot control your lungs anymore as they move in a rhythm more steady than your all too-human heart. It shatters your concentration and your connection and then you cannot feel her anymore.

You scourge the galaxy, looking for her in desperation and fear. You cannot find her.

Your presence whirls through space like a cyclone until it centers on the only person you have left, standing right in front of you.

He asks if you can hear him, but his words mean something else. He wants to know if you are his apprentice or his enemy. He wants to know if you answer to the name he bestowed upon you or the one you bestowed upon her on the day of your wedding. He questions who your erratic heart belongs to.

Well. Your answer depends entirely on who remains to claim the beating organ.

_Where is Padmé?_ , you ask, but your voice is distorted and bland and not your voice at all. But you have to know, so you push on. _Is she safe? Is she alright?_

You reach and reach but nothing reaches back and you are afraid of the answer, afraid to hear the truth you refuse to acknowledge.

_It seems, in your anger, you killed her_ , your master says. He speaks without inflection, but through the Force you can feel his anticipation.

Your heart stops. Unbidden your mind flashes back to Mustafar, to her unmoving body on the landing platform. She was still alive. You know she was. You felt she was. You felt her just now.

Just now, until you didn’t anymore. Couldn’t anymore. Right when you started a new life, she ended hers. Or you ended hers.

Yet you deny it. You rage and you scream but you cannot change the truth. You, who swore to save her from death and destroyed yourself in the process, you killed her.

It isn’t your heart that resumes beating. From now on, like the rest of you, it is made of cold black steel. It is the bolt that screws your coffin shut and you are no longer alive inside.

You know your answer. You know who you are. You know your name.


End file.
